Spending to Save

Author: Cat

6Feb

Loren ordered some coupons from www.Restaurant.com so we went to Grind House Bar & Grill for lunch today. He paid $3 for a $25 off coupon, but the catch is you have to spend $45.

I’m pretty sure the Grind House used to be a Beef O’Brady’s. I know we had eaten in the space before, but it was a different restaurant at the time. Honestly, we weren’t expecting much from a sports bar, but the food turned out to be exceptionally good.

So, how do you spend $45 in a sports bar? You start with an appetizer, queso and chips.

The chips were warm and crispy and the queso had a nice texture and wasn’t too spicy. Loren liked the green onions on top, I just scooped around them.

Since it was a chilly day for Florida, mid-60’s, we went for some lobster/shrimp bisque and a bowl of chili.

I gotta say, I was amazed at how good the bisque was. It had incredible flavor and lots of chunks of lobster and shrimp in it. I’d go back for the bisque anytime.

So, we’re up to $13 now. What shall we get for entrees? Loren’s been craving a steak so he indulged in the top sirloin with a side of shrimp, mashed taters, and veggies.

He was leary about ordering it, but pleasantly surprised at how good it was. The steak was cooked a nice medium, the shrimp were tasty and he had leftovers.

I wanted a good ol’ greasy cheeseburger with sauteed mushrooms and onions and a side of onion rings.

The burger and onion rings were both good. But, I was already pretty full, so most of it came home with me.

We still hadn’t reached $45 yet, so we had to get dessert. Ok, we would have gotten dessert regardless because how can you pass up “warm brownie, with strawberries, caramel, chocolate sauce, ice cream and whipped cream”?

As full as we both were, it didn’t take long for it to look like this:

It was a really tasty dessert. We also got a slice of apple pie to take home.

We ended up spending $31 after the coupon and not including the tip. Would we have spent that much without the coupon? Probably not. Was it worth it? Without a doubt, yes. The food was really good. We didn’t even know the restaurant existed and probably would have never gone there without the coupon, but after such a great food experience, we’ll definitely go back.

We thought we were in for an ordinary lunch at a hole in the wall sports bar, but instead we ended up with an incredible lunch and enough food for dinner as well. Well worth the trip, coupon or not.